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'Garden of Eden' to become Iraqi national park

The vast expanse of marshland in the south of the country is home to species such as water buffalo, the Basra reed warbler and the Iraq babbler.

Its wetland ecosystem, the largest in the Middle East, was thought to be lost forever after Saddam Hussein cut off the country's two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, in an attempt to expel the Ma’dan tribes following the first Gulf War in 1991. Ninety-three percent of the ecosystem was destroyed.

After Saddam’s downfall in 2003 the dams were destroyed and the water returned, restoring the reed beds and the wildlife.

To the surprise of conservationists, all 278 recorded bird species survived, reports the New Scientist. "It shows how resilient nature can be, and gives hope that other lost wetlands can be restored,” said Richard Porter of Birdlife International.

Azzam Alwash is the founder and president of Nature Iraq, the charity that campaigned for the park’s creation. “For Iraq, the fact that we are willing to dedicate a portion of our land to nature is a wonderful step,” he said.

He described the Mesopotamian marshes that will be protected as “the cradle of civilisation”. Iraq is believed to be the birthplace of, among other things, agriculture, writing, monotheism and the wheel.

However, the future may not be easy for the park. Iraq’s neighbours upstream, Syria, Turkey and Iran, are increasingly restricting the water of the two rivers. To counter this, Nature Iraq has arranged the construction of a system of banks to divert water into the wetlands every spring.

"Declaring a park isn't just a bit of paper. It will mean we can reserve a percentage of the water from the rivers for the marshes,” says Alwash. Nature Iraq hopes that a stable water supply could boost wildlife to the levels found in the 1970s.

Ultimately, the idea is to attract paying visitors to help sustain the park, although there is unlikely to be a steady stream of tourists in the short term.